| THE BRIDE by Wally Swist Salutations: after Antonio Porchia for Richard Shaw 1.The fields are buttercupped and edged with ragged robin. We’ve entered the realm of the subtle variegations of the colors of summer. 2.Wishing you well on a mid-June evening, one on which the fading light of duskis struck with nothing less than what I call an inner splendor spreading outward. 3.Revel in the day. Each moment offers up specific delight: the thick sweet scent of mulitflora roses; an oriole’s bright call,repeating itself; Deptford-pink blooming along the southern windbreak, among yellow tansy. 4.Ah, you have seen the first fireflies, the fireflies blinking in the darkness,filling you with their otherwordly light, marking their appearance, enrapt with wonder. The Bride after Rainer Maria Rilke She inhabited the house, This bride, who in her blondness preferred to languish here. Each hour was filled with the tone of her voice, her breathing. Every sound still contains her tread and bearing.Household objects, which facilitated my life, Became forlorn whenever they discerned it was me who approached, Since they ached for the one whose intuition held them just so; And with whom they could be fulfilled, simply and completely.Not one item in the house could be said to be endowed with her; However, the crystal and China clearly stated to me, “I’m not yours.” But it was when I passed down the long hallways at dusk when All the mirrors importuned her loveliness, entreating only a glimpse of her. —from The Schmargendorf Diary (1900) by Rainer Maria Rilke Summer Roadside Queen Anne’s LaceYour round flat tops are a chalice for the dew and dawn. Your fine white floret umbrellas could inspire designs in Valenciennes. Imparting the extraordinary to any field or meadow, your precise inflorescence intimates expansiveness, abandon. Within you, especially in a cluster, we see the many as one, and the one as many. Blue ChicoryYou are always a kind of blue, harmonizing with purple clover, buttercups, Deptford pinks, as Miles Davis’ cool trumpet sound meshed with John Coltrane’s mesmerizing saxophone. Your blue dotting the roadside is similar to Seurat’s brush dabbing a canvas— you appear as one, near the empty wagon-as-corn-stand, or the many, in a wild bundle at the base of a street sign, intersecting farm fields. Purple LoosestrifeHow could such a regal hue belie your invasive aggression? We see the way you spring up wild among cattails to crowd them out and overtake the bog. Although your color is so often associated with splendor, we can nearly forgive your path toward disruption. Your gentrified hues beguile us in forgetting how agile your are in numbers in choking off brooks and rivers. MulleinPhallic temple of a plant, no wonder you are also nicknamed Aaron’s Rod. Your velvety soft leaves were used as socks by the Algonquin to line their moccasins. You are also known as the Candlewick Plant, since your dried stems and leaves were used to make wicks to light lamps. Tea made from you was given to treat those with bronchitis and asthma. Your little five-petaled yellow flowers alight your tall spike. How much their broad array fills us with simple wonder. Kundalini: Twin Flames 1.We have finally found it— something written about our awakening together in October, and it is Januaryalready. Our spirits soar as we read, corroborating signs of the manifestation of your face becomingan orb of white light and the jagged-white flames of light partially obscuring my face, all of which streamedthrough us, for over two hours in your kitchen, on the last Sunday in October. But it is in reading aloud about whatwe experienced that we come to know what others observed, too. Afterward when I stand up, the coursing of a current rises through the chakras in my body, that rush, like a fountain, up through sarhasrara, that crest beyond the top of my head;and you feel a tingling throughout your body, especially from the dearness of your feet up throughyour legs. Blissfully aware that our consciousness expands, you tell me that your heart throbs with joy. 2.While you listen to me read, you notice that our friends are back again. You can see a faint violet aura nearthe louvered kitchen door behind me and flashing white lights. It is always you seeing the colors andthe lights. Our friends must find you the trustworthy one among the two of us, since your strength and resilienceis something that can be counted on. While you listened to me read aloud again last night, you told me this morningthat you saw a green aura surrounding me, which is the Archangel Metatron’s color. This archangel isis responsible for changing negative thoughts to positive ones, whose sacred geometry is evident in his appearancein a spinning cube of light, revolving clockwise, known as Metatron’s Cube, which clears undesired psychic residue.Both of us present enough just to be, to experience that grace, of what expands within us, and beyond us, you tell me your heart throbs with joy. Oh, What a Pity: An Ode to Paula Modersohn-Becker 1.First modern woman artist. First woman artist to paint a self-portrait of herself naked, while she was pregnant. Close friend of artist Clara Westhoff and poet Rainer Maria Rilke, you lived a short but prolific life, producing up to 80 paintings per year.Married to a renown German landscape painter, Otto Modersohn, you were perplexed as to what name to sign her paintings by,and even discussed your anxiety over this decision with Rilke— finally acceding to the hyphenated combination of your sur nameand your married name, Modersohn-Becker. Originally having met Clara Westhoff and Rainer Maria Rilkewhile living in the Worpswede Artists Colony, the friendship the three of you enjoyed extended past your time thereperpetuated even while Clara and Rainer were in Paris working for Rodin. You combination of naïve art and your intuitiveassimilation of impressionism was both resonant and poignant in your painting. Although you only sold three paintings during your life,your work is now known worldwide. You are now considered to have lead the modernist movement in art, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. 2.A woman of her own mind, you defied your parents to join the Worpswede Artists Colony where you not only met the Rilkes but also Otto Modersohn, who became your husband. Your parents tried to intervene in your engagement, and sent you to cooking school,so she could be an attending wife. But you desperately “wanted to be somebody,” and stood firm in your following your dreamsof becoming an accomplished painter. You frequently painted women as they gardened, as they breastfed, and as they slept.You died at the early age of thirty-one from an embolism after giving birth to your daughter, Mathilde. Your last wordsrecorded were: Oh, what a pity. You are also known for your paintings of lemons, cherries, and pumpkins. These are mentioned in Rilke’s elegy to you, his soul mate, in “Requiem for a Friend,” which is memorable for many lines, but certainly for these two:“For somewhere an old enmity exists between our life and the great works we do.” https://www.theguardian.com/…/being-here-life-paula-modersohn-becker-marie-darrieus.time.com › Newsfeed › Google Doodlehttps://thewitcontinuum.wordpress.com/requiem-for-a-friend-by-rilke/ About the Author:  Wally Swist’s recent books include The Map of Eternity (Shanti Arts, 2018), Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (The Operating System, 2018), and On Beauty: Essays, Reviews, Fiction, and Plays (Adelaide Books. 2018). His book A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature was the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize and published in 2019. Forthcoming books include Evanescence: Selected and New Poems (2019) and The Bees of the Invisible (2020), also from Shanti Arts of Brunswick, Maine. |
